1986 Mazda 626 GT Turbo review from North America

There where a few problems with the engine that I attribute to poor instalation of a new engine. The valve cover gasket was leaking oil and the turbo intake gasket was slipped. But all that is due to poor workmanship on the part of the mechanic. 200 bucks and I got both of them fixed. there was a hole in the tranny pan from the previous owner jumping some railroad tracks at 50mph and put the cross member bolt into the tranny pan. a little bit of JB weld and some gear oil and the leak and hole was fixed. The interior appears to have been stripped and put back together at one point. The manner and condition it was done paired with the modifications to the engine leads me to belive one of two things. Either this car was used to run drugs from one place to another or someone did some serious dukes of hazard type stuff with it.

I bought this car on Ebay for $500 intending to strip it down for weight and tune the engine up for power. then drive it around the back roads at highly unsafe speeds doing very stupid things like power slide around corners and just plain beat it up till it dies or I put it on its roof, usually both. Then sell it to the local scrap yard. I fell in love with the sheer power of this car on the freeway. The turbocharger really puts a lot of stink to the ground when it kicks in at 3k RPM and I bark the tires in third gear going to fourth. I decided to keep my mazda as my daily driver and the 35-40 MPG @65 MPH was a deciding factor also. After I fixed a few of the small peoblems it had such as the O2 sensor and the leaks there was a dramatic power increase. The car tops out at around 120 mph redlining and has no problems or doubts about getting there. it is very eager and hard to keep at 65mph for the turbo kicks in and just jumps to 80mph like "it ain't no thing"All in all I would recommend this car to anyone who wants a lot of bang for not a lot of buck.